Building the Emergency Lightbar Controller

The project aims to produce a cheap controller for emergency lightbar which are normally found on most emergency sirens mounted on top of police cars.

Two versions of emergency lightbar controller are shown in this project wherein the first prototype is based on a PIC16F627 microcontroller for reading a panel of operator input switches while having 24 outputs for this version. It can drive a variety of lamp options on a roof-mounted lightbar since it can control 16 to 24 high current outputs. To control LEDs, lamps, and relays is made possible by supporting up to 24 FET outputs. The sink capability is dependent on the output FET used and the amount of heatsinking used when mounting the FETs as each output is an open drain.

A single-sided 8-output device is the design of the second version is be used for construction vehicles as a portable warning device. It was designed to be mounted inside the rear window of a pickup truck and plugged into the cigar lighter. It was constructed using a 3/16” plexiglass strip drilled for the 480 LEDs with 4×15×8 segments. The LED mounting strip uses a CNC drilling machine.

Rest of the project